Mass Surveillance in Post 9/11 Society

By Abigail Hamrah

Alt-text: A black and white photo of Edward Snowden, a man with glasses and some facial hair. His name and former occupation type out on the bottom left corner of the image.

Do you remember Edward Snowden? If you don’t, he is the man that laid bare the questionable ways that the National Security Agencies (NSA) used surveillance in post 9/11 society. In 2013, he handed thousands of highly classified documents to journalists in Hong Kong, in an effort to expose the issue of mass surveillance.

Some people now commonly refer to Snowden as a “whistleblower” to the intelligence community, acting for the common good. While others, namely the US government, view him as plainly a criminal and traitor. His purposeful leak of files revealed global surveillance programs that sparked a conversation about how much this surveillance strengthened national security and simultaneously stunted individual privacy. Snowden's actions landed him in Russia, where he still resides today for fear of being arrested if he returns back to the United States. But, what pushed Edward Snowden to make such a scandalous move? Let’s backtrack! ✅

The Start

The year was 2001, it was a calm and beautiful morning for lots of New Yorkers on September the 11th. Until the unthinkable happened, two commercial airplanes flew directly into the two tallest buildings in New York, the Twin Towers. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon and the final plane crashed in an open field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, presumably headed to another monumental US building. All four planes were hijacked by islamic jihadists that wanted to send an earnest message to the world and to weaken the influence of America as a whole. Consequently, these tactical venues and the immense loss of life, sent shockwaves of vulnerability and fear across the nation that would act as a catalyst for the reformation of American foreign and domestic policy. With the palpable threat of terrorism looming on the American conscience, the U.S. Government recognized their need for a swift response.

The Provisions

Immediately following 9/11 the Patriot Act of 2001 was enacted to expand domestic security. It broadened the definition of “terrorist” to make certain that nothing similar to 9/11 could ever happen again. This allowed government agencies to surveal mass amounts of records, private property, and granting them investigatory powers. It led to indefinite imprisonment of suspected terrorists and subsequent torturing of those terrorists, at places like Guantanamo Bay. It is contested whether these suspected terrorists ever had any intent to inflict any terror against a group of people, yet they are still held captive. The passage of the Patriot Act could be referred to as “the beginning of the end”, pertaining to democracy in America and other countries around the world. But was it? We don’t know.

Then, in 2007 the PRISM Program was launched, this program gave the NSA authorization to collect and sift through data from massive companies like Google, Apply, Microsoft, and many others. The companies included in PRISM’s jurisdiction facilitated the vast majority of online dealings and relations. Now – thanks to the PRISM program – your emails, search history, and other forms of communication can be seized and searched at any time without you knowing. When this program was put into effect, the company's in which data was taken from said they didn’t even know their data would be shared with the government – claiming they had never heard of PRISM. What was really the truth? We still don’t know.

Also, the FISA Amendments of 2008, specifically section 702, further permitted the government to target people located outside of the United States to spy on their electronic communications. This was different from the original FISA principles because it used to surveal activities only in the United States. All of these changes to intelligence policy were done to keep America safe against terrorism. FISA for one did play an integral role in arresting Najibullah Zazi, a confirmed terrorist –working with al-Queda – that was planning suicide attacks in the New York subway system. 📷

The mass surveillance that came about as a result of all of these resolutions and programs being put into effect was quite extensive. They also used facial recognition technology to track individuals of interest to support the mission of fighting terrorism. These acts did apprehend terrorists and disrupt their operations, but some Americans wondered – like Edward Snowden – at what cost? Since no policy would exist in a vacuum, let's take a look at how these programs worked in effect. 

Alt-text: Flashing images of a surveillance camera, a man being surveilled at his car in black and white, that image on another device, and the top of a phone screen.

The Aftermath

Mass surveillance does not just involve federal agencies, but also police, private companies, and individuals in the American public. These mass surveillance efforts have disproportionately targeted marginalized groups for privacy violations, including but not limited to Muslim, Arab, Hispanic, Black, and Indigenous people. Surveillance has also been used to suppress protest movements like Black Lives Matter, closely monitoring and even deterring protesters from demonstrating. Asian Americans have also become a prime target for invasive surveillance efforts because of the growing contentious relationship between the US and China. The two countries compete with one another to pass each other in global influence. As China inches closer and closer to surpassing America in power, the United States has become increasingly agitated with that prospect – leading to reactive actions such as these. 

Another group of people in the United States that have been tracked to no end have been migrants. When most of these individuals are only guilty of one civil crime, crossing the border into America without the proper authorization. They are still trailed by authorities using surveillance technology, apprehended, imprisoned, and then deported. These types of apprehensions of civilians are largely condemned by the American public, they question if privacy is sacred anymore. The sheer amount of high powered technology that is at authorities disposal is almost unfathomable to the average person. It has since been proven that the extent at which surveillance is carried out is near impossible to oversee or undo the effects of. Intelligence agencies have yet to disclose the amount of people that have been investigated through these channels, leading people to believe that it has violated many people's privacy to no avail. 

The public of any given country appreciates transparency on a personal level, but when it comes to government it seems like it is almost required. People have the tendency to question authority, especially the government, so they need years of consistent transparency to even begin to trust the government. Mass surveillance has undermined much of the trust the government might have earned from Americans over the years. Another cause for concern in many Americans' eyes is the fact that the intelligence expenditure has doubled, from forty-billion in the 1990’s to now a whopping 80-billion per year in 2020. This could be extremely worrisome to the American public, if you know one thing about Americans governmental worries, it is with their tax payer dollars and how they are spent. Some Americans feel that they are paying for their freedom and privacy to be repealed, instead of ensuring security and “fighting terrorism”, which was the main goal of the development of mass surveillance. 

Overall

Edward Snowden exposed that mass surveillance is being conducted by federal agencies and he felt that sharing the information was a noble cause. He did this knowing he would have to flee the country to keep authorities from arresting him. The manufacturing of mass surveillance was the aftermath of the terrorist attack on 9/11, the intelligence community failed to keep that tragedy from happening. As a result, the gravity of the event pushed the elected officials and federal regents of the time to act fast to repossess the security of America. The existence of mass surveillance has disproportionately affected marginalized groups, making them vulnerable to a non consensual search of their property and communications. These mass surveillance tactics have successfully apprehended many terrorists though, keeping them from leading more attacks. This is a multifaceted issue with a not so straightforward solution. What should take precedence? National security or individual privacy and rights protections?